Jokes apart: India’s unbearable grumpiness of being
In the last few months, two Indian state governments fought over who invented a sweet delicacy called rosogolla, yearly bans were invoked over what is cooking in one’s neighbour’s kitchen and cops were unleashed on a stand-up comedy group for stand-up comedy.
The list runs longer. A fatwa was slapped on a star musician for making doubtlessly ethereal music for a movie, a communal riot with guns blazing from rooftops was triggered by a cow that strayed to graze in a neighbour’s field, and an Indian was stabbed to death in Kuwait by his roommate for cracking a tasteless joke on Nepal earthquake victims.
Why are we Indians such a bunch of humourless, uptight, pompous, hypersensitive, sanctimonious sods? Why are we always offended? Why is someone or the other always taking our tweets or Facebook posts literally, unless of course we hashtag them #irony, #sarcasm, #poke or #trollbait?
Why has our differences in political opinion spawned an entire glossary of kindergarten insults like Congi, Sanghi, AAPtard, Moditard, libtard, sickular, khaki chaddi and suchlike?
In short, why do we take ourselves so seriously?
I had asked this on Twitter on Saturday, and some of the replies were interesting. “We have an inherent insecurity/inferiority complex because of which we are so sensitive,” said Vidya Sinha or @vidsin.
Ranjith P or @ranjithp posted: “Because we don’t always listen/use our mother tongue. Humour = good understanding of language. We lack that.”
Most pointed to insecurity and a perpetual state of victimhood. “Humour is also ‘benign violence’ in many forms, and all of us are insecure and in victim mode most of the times,” tweeted Rahul Roushan, founder of Faking News.
An entire nation’s unbearable grumpiness of being can only be explained by long years of no laughter and no forgetting. In our case, the cocktail is particularly heady. Centuries-old caste hierarchy, invaders and their gift of centuries of low self-esteem, legacy of Victorian prudery, and a grim scramble to pick up the crumbs of a welfare state in independent India are all potent ingredients.
We have grown up being told not to joke with parents, family elders, priests, teachers, doctors, bosses – just about nobody who must wield any power over us. It is as if a joke or a prank would shatter that fragile social contract.
The feeling of inferiority of our predecessors had much to do with being part of an orthodox order but witnessing a fast-changing one of the young, which they couldn’t fully understand. To keep their hierarchy and importance intact, most of them just couldn’t afford humour.
Our insecurity lies elsewhere. Identities have become our only anchors in a wildly fast river of change. Whether I am a Modi fan, AAP revolutionary, Tambram, Sunni Muslim, northeasterner, Gandhian, gay or overweight is no laughing matter.
And beyond that identity, don’t ask me who I am. Frankly, I don’t know.
However, I am offended by everything I am not. You can’t eat the food you like but I don’t, can’t make love in ways I have not discovered, can’t read books that I don’t understand but intensely hate.
Any joke or otherness is a potential Molotov cocktail. I am ready with my defences even before it is lobbed.
First salvo: “It’s politically incorrect.”
Second salvo: “It hurts my feelings.”
Third salvo: “It must be banned.”
Now, now, now.